In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a character received salvation even when it is not deserved. For instance, an old woman is trying to negotiate with a serial killer by asking him to pray. “If you would pray, Jesus would help you,” she says to him, and he agrees that this would be the case. “Well then, why don’t you pray?” she asks. “I don’t want no help,” he says. “I’m doing all right by myself.” In a distraught frenzy, the woman reaches out to him, but he responds by shooting her three times in the chest. O’Connor describes his eyes after the killing as “red-rimmed and pale and defenseless.” This is a point of defenselessness; the killer, the Misfit, despises kindness, yet he feels it once it is not present. Also the grandmother and the Misfit
